I am going to preface this review by saying that you are ruining your enjoyment of the show if you watch the HorribleSubs release. Don’t do that to yourself. As for which of the Yurikuma fansubs is your best bet, well… feed me your hits.

External links.

Visual Review

Karaoke.

Opening.

Rating: Excellent. This was pure pleasure to watch. While I’m all about Watashi’s over-the-top karaoke, Asenshi plays this a bit more conservatively, and I think it fits the OP perfectly. Well done, them.

Ending.

Rating: Great. I’m way into these colors. It’s a shame the ED itself is so lazy.

Typesetting.

I walked into this expecting high quality, and Asenshi delivered.

Spoiler:

Typesetting this smooth is great in most shows, but in Yurikuma, it is absolutely essential to the experience. Engaging and natural, it’s hard to see why anyone would go for Funimation over this.

Script Review

Main Script-.

Unless you’re going for something deep here (which you aren’t), you should be using “short time”, not “short life”.

I know your editor’s better than this, Senshi-sans. Put quotes around “bear” or throw it in italics.

If “waltzed” was all you had to work with, I could forgive this line. But why would you go this route when you have “strolled” available? I would’ve even taken “sauntered”, cuz that’s a sassy word for sassy bears.

Imagery, people!

I have no idea what’s going on here. I understand playing these lines safe — the show doesn’t exactly write out what’s happening. But at some point you need to take a stance on a line so the people watching can have some idea of what’s going on.

Watashi had “And those who don’t follow the herd are purged.”//”That’s how it’s always worked, right?” which makes a lot more sense because it’s actually saying something.

I don’t get what the joke is supposed to be here. To save y’all the google searching, she’s talking about chawanmushi (“egg custard”), which is sometimes made with lily bulbs.

Watashi’s made sense: “It’s really sprouting!”//”I totally thought you were supposed to put the bulb in soup since it looks like an onion!”//”You’re so silly, Sumika.”

But in this, she’s not going “Hey, you can use lily bulbs for something else? They actually grow into real lilies?” so there’s no reason to bring up how “silly” Sumika is.

Main Script+.

Now, let me break up the hate parade by saying that I still really like this release. Lines like the above add a certain panache that you can’t get with Funimation’s lazy effort.

And sentences like this are fine — even commendable — cuz even though proper grammar dictates this should be “Ginko and I”, Lulu’s ditzy ass would totally phrase her sentences as such. Characterization is always appreciated.

So while this release plays it safe (comparable to Watashi, at least), I wouldn’t say it’s dull. And it’s definitely leagues above Funi’s boring text-on-a-screen.

Translation style.

This section is more for your notes than anything, as I don’t particularly like factoring in translation styles into my scores unless I have a good reason for it.

I went over this enough in the Funi review, but I’m a definite fan of how Asenshi just translated yuri as straight lily.

I talked this over with Akatsukin in a separate thread, but I’ll go over it again here.

Basically, I am not a fan of this sentence. I do not understand why Yurikuma would have a random line in a throwaway scene about how fucking awesome pubic hair is, when it completely contradicts the tone in the rest of the show.

That being said, Aka-san-senpai did provide sufficient evidence that the term used — ギャランドゥ — actually does mean “happy trail”. So this puts us in a really weird spot. I can’t, in good conscience, mark Asenshi down for this. But if I were editing here, I would euphemize the shit out of the line so the meaning gets across in a tone that fits in with the rest of the show.

While I did bitch out Funimation for using “Invisible Storm”, I don’t actually care in Asenshi’s case. Reason being, fansubs don’t have official scripts or potential assistance from the studios, so criticizing them for coming up with a translation for a tricky, impactful term would be meaningless. More importantly, they used it consistently so there aren’t any issues there.

Anyway, it’s Invisible Storm in this release. Acceptable and understandable.

“Severance Barrier” is a term that makes sense. It cuts off the humans from the bears. Simple, smart. No issues here.

While they didn’t translate the pun (with kuma meaning bear), this is a lot better than Funi’s Kumalia.

I’m down with this portmanteau. If you haven’t watched the show yet (you eventually should), the bear’s saying “delicious smell” in Engrish, but it’s sorta hard to make out those exact words. (Asenshi actually had it as “delicious meal” before.)

Results

For most people, this is going to be the release to get for Yurikuma. There aren’t any asterisks I need to attach to it; this is just quality pure and simple — watch and enjoy.

But if you’re an adventurous sort, I recommend sticking around for my Watashi analysis. Those of you who lurk our IRC channel may have seen me fangirling the fuck out when I was talking about Watashi’s translation choices. And if you’re okay with their translation style, there’s a very good argument for going with them instead.

>why would you go this route when you have “strolled” available? I would’ve even taken “sauntered”, cuz that’s a sassy word for sassy bears.
They’re school girls talking, though. “waltzed right in” is a pretty common expression, so I don’t see what’s wrong with it. And I’ll be damned if I’ve ever heard school kids use the word “sauntered”.

Imagery is good, but it breaks immersion when you see a line or words that schoolgirls wouldn’t likely use.

‘Waltzed right in’ might be a line we Brits use more than you Americans (especially in apoplectic rage about some perceived injustice with the world, like someone else taking the last pork pie), but it’s not really meant to be taken as them *actually* waltzing, as hilarious as that would be.

It’s a pretty common phrase here and while it’s not necessarily wrong that you called it out if it’s not used in America as much, I think it should be put down to ‘culture clash’ rather than bad imagery.

I’m not entirely sure I understand Sagey’s issue with it then. As with many idioms, it’s not meant to be taken literally, though I suppose there is a case that it doesn’t quite work contextually (it’s more of a rant phrase than an “OMG look! A bear!” kind of phrase. Hyperbolic rather than descriptive – a “who does he/she think he/she is, casually walking into this place like that?”).

The way the complaint is worded doesn’t make that especially clear, however.

As an aside, if the show was about waltzing bears, I’d be much more likely to watch it ;)

Yes, but you have to be very literal-minded to suggest a standard idiom is worse than another similar phrase because of “imagery”. To use an example in this very same review, what about the ‘light bulb moment’ that you marked down as being a shining example of good editing? She didn’t really have a tender moment, gazing deep into the metaphorical eyes of a light bulb (the filament, I presume), nor did she suddenly become bioluminescent, but because we know that the idiom stands in for a sudden moment of realisation, the literal image isn’t important. You also can’t tell me there aren’t dozens of other ways to express that – though things like “and then it hit me” have similar problems in that she wasn’t physically hit.

That way, madness lies. If you’re going to pick apart commonplace idioms, you need something a lot stronger to go on than “imagery”.

Well, as a stroll is a leisurely walk done for the pleasure of walking (and it’s highly debatable as to whether a bear understands the concept of ‘leisure’ or even such abstract pleasures), I can’t see why you think it makes more visual sense than waltzing. It might be a regularly used phrase, certainly, but that doesn’t make it *technically* accurate – in the same way, someone/some animal can ‘waltz in’ without actually waltzing. You’re anthropormophising in both cases, of course, which I suppose isn’t too big a problem as these *are* bear girls.

And I’ve heard of foxes waltzing into chicken coops and stealing chickens far more times than I’ve heard of them strolling in. We don’t really get bears here :D

I’m not saying it’s perfect – I think that, contextually, it’s not quite on the money, for the reason I stated earlier – but your idea that it’s somehow less accurate as an image when, to be honest, most idioms don’t make any literal sense anyway is a somewhat shaky one.

To me, “they waltzed right in” has the connotation that they were drawing attention to themselves but STILL somehow managed to pass through the Severance Barrier. “They did this whole song and dance” sort of thing but still went unnoticed. Moreover, it also has a “who do you think you are” connotation attached to it – which is great, because who the fuck do these bears think they are coming into cities; they’re bears, not people. “Strolled” is very leisure, so it does not have either of these connotations. “Waltzed” also fits the more outrageous and “literally what the fuck” tone of the show, as you can imagine bears waltzing in rather than simply strolling in.

“Waltzed right in” is a perfect line. It basically means casually walking into a situation that you really shouldn’t. Like if you offend a group of people, and then ‘waltz right in’ like nothing ever happened. Almost like that person is goading or showing off infront of that group, where they might actually not be aware of it. Maybe you’re taking it too literally.